More youths using marijuana, panel says

SAN DIEGO -- The neatly dressed young man quietly sitting next
to experts Wednesday didn't look like a poster boy for marijuana
abuse.

However, 18-year-old Juan Yanez of Encinitas earned his
credentials to be a panelist at the noon "Marijuana and Kids" media
briefing at the San Diego County Administration Center.

At one point before he overdosed and went into rehabilitation,
the soft-spoken Yanez said, he hung out with gang members and sold
drugs to pay for his own drug abuse.

"Marijuana is a problem," he said, drawing smiles for his
understatement.

Robert Denniston, deputy director of the National Youth
Anti-Drug Media Campaign, led the 1 1/2-hour session which involved
local medical, scientific and treatment experts in the attempt to
reduce and prevent youthful drug abuse.

The picture they verbally drew was simple -- more young people
are using more potent marijuana at an earlier age and getting into
more trouble.

Not every marijuana user becomes addicted, panelists said, but
it is a serious drug with serious consequences, including use of
alcohol and other drugs that can lead to violence and crime.

"Marijuana's pretty much been let off the hook for a long time,"
Denniston said in an interview. "People wink at it -- 'It's just
marijuana.'"

Of young people who use drugs, said Denniston, 60 percent use
just marijuana.

"We've got twice as many young people using at the eighth grade
level than a decade ago," the federal official said.

Nearly 42 percent of high school students surveyed in this
county have tried marijuana at least once, and 13.5 percent of the
students who tried it did so before age 13, said panelist Linda
Bridgeman Smith, planning manager for the county's Alcohol and Drug
Services.

When he was in the sixth grade, Yanez said, curiosity prompted
him to try marijuana at a friend's home.

"We rolled a joint and smoked it," he said. "It became a
habit."

It is important for parents to talk to their children
specifically about marijuana abuse at a very early age, panelists
said, and parents should know where their children are and who
they're with, particularly after school.

His mother worked and his dad wasn't around, Yanez said.

Studies show that marijuana effects can be reversed when the
drug abuse stops, but children who smoke pot are affected socially,
academically and physically, said Dr. Igor Koutsenok, associate
director of UCSD's Department of Psychiatry, Addiction Training
Center.

"I was skipping school a lot," Yanez said. "My grades were going
down."

Then he lost a soccer scholarship and his family didn't want him
around because of his drug problems, which also included crystal
methamphetamine and heroin, said the teen.

Close to 80 percent of the drug abusers at the Phoenix House of
San Diego rehab center use marijuana in addition to other drugs,
said Elizabeth Urquehart, the center's director of adolescent
services.

When he got into a fight at school, said Yanez, authorities
found crystal meth and marijuana on him. He went into drug rehab,
flunked a drug test and overdosed, he said, before realizing things
had to change.